Mercury
by MrsTater
Summary: Richard celebrates a scoop with his secretary. Outtake from A Girl in Black.


**_A/N: Of course since A Girl in Black is from Mary's POV, we don't get to see what's going on when Richard's not at Downton for Saturday to Monday parties. (or Saturday to Sunday, as the case is…) But I do have a fair bit of story in my head about what he's up to, and this one-shot is one such moment. It lots between chapters 16 and 17. Dedicated to sierrac, who asked for fic about Miss Fields. Thanks to ju-dou for betaing!_**

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**Mercury**

"And here's tomorrow's front page, Sir, straight off the press," says Miss Fields, her brisk footsteps carrying her most efficiently through the vast office to deposit the morning edition on the desk.

The springs of the swivel chair creak as Richard leans forward, blinking against the electric lights of his office, which he realises seem too bright in comparison to Downton Abbey, where he has just been in his thoughts. _EXCLUSIVE: HOURS BEFORE DEATH, TURKISH DIPLOMAT SPEAKS ON PEACE TALKS, FUTURE OF EMPIRE._

"Another triumph for the Telegram," says Miss Fields, opening the handsome carved ebonised humidor on his desk without his bidding her to do so and taking out one of his favourite Cubans, reserved for such occasions; this is the third he's smoked this year.

But it occurs to him as he lights his cigar from the match his secretary strikes from the ever-ready book kept in her skirt pocket, that he sat here having his first celebratory smoke last April, as the world as Mary always knew it sank beneath the North Atlantic.

Still, any remorse he might have for dancing a tango on Cousin Patrick's watery grave vanishes with the thought that Mary showed more emotion at his own hasty departure from Downton this afternoon than at her former fiancés exit from this world.

His gaze is drawn by Miss Fields' long typist's fingers snapping the lid shut on the humidor. "Do help yourself, Miss Fields. You deserve some credit for this victory as much as I do."

He smirks as Miss Fields replaces the cigar box in precisely the same position on his desk as she found it. "Thank you, Sir Richard, I don't smoke," she says as she always does, as if he doesn't always offer.

For a moment he studies her: tall, her posture correct as if she were a lady-in fact she trained ladies, in her prior work as a governess, which always puts him in mind of Jane Eyre, from the plain neat grey dress to the austere centre part of her hair.

He puffs on his cigar as he scrutinises her coif, and thinks of kissing Mary in the library last night, in her virginal nightdress, and of his fingers tugging at the end if her ribbon to release the waves of her hair from the plait.

"It's past one," Richard says.

"A quarter two," Miss Fields replies.

"I phoned you at eleven and you arrived here twenty minutes later. Your flat is fifteen minutes from the office. Were you in bed?"

"I was, Sir. I retired at 8."

"In your clothes? With your hair coifed? Ever at the ready?"

"I dress quickly."

"And entirely unassisted."

He recalls the seemingly endless wait in Lord Grantham's drawing room while Mary's maid dressed her and coifed her hair in that bewildering and tantalising arrangement of curls and twists and hairpins which she could never recreate on her own. And how long it took to remove the layers of her clothes, his impatience building until he tore her corset.

He draws on his cigar again, releasing a long puff of smoke.

"You needn't bother in the middle of the night, you know."

"I believe in maintaining a professional demeanour in the office at all times."

"Should I put on my jacket?" Richard indicates the pinstriped black suit coat draped over the back of his chair. "Button my collar and fix my tie?"

"I'd never presume to tell my employer what he should do."

Noting the glimmer of repartee in her eyes above the rims of her spectacles, Richard chuckles and leans back in his chair. Jane Eyre, indeed. That must make him Rochester, sans physical desire for his employee. He recalls how he jokingly implored Mary not to speak of him as a hero in a Gothic novel, and his smile fades with his laughter. The way her brown eyes watched him when he told her he was leaving now strikes him as confounded as Miss Eyre was by Rochester's mercurial behaviour.

"That is exactly the level of professionalism I hope you will impress upon your new protégée."

"My new protégée, Sir?"

"Mmm..." He curves his mouth around the cigar, lips still parted in an o when he withdraws it to exhale a ring of smoke. "I hired one of Lord and Lady Grantham's housemaids. She was going to take a correspondence course. Lord love her."

"That was kind of you. Especially as poaching a servant will hardly ingratiate you to Lady Mary's family."

"Am I mistaken, Miss Fields, or have you trod perilously close to the line of telling your employer what he should do?" Richard leans more heavily against the back of his chair, which creaks a bit as it rocks. "The deed did ingratiate me to Lady Mary's little sister. Miss Dawson was rather a pet project of hers, and I found Lady Sybil too charming to disappoint."

Miss Fields reaches up a hand to push her spectacles back up onto the bridge of her nose from where they slipped to the tip. "Ought I to be worried about my being imminently replaced, Sir? Only Miss Dawson must have demonstrated great promise, because there's no one alive charming enough that you'd have a qualm about disappointing."

"Miss Fields, are you suggesting I'm going soft in my middle-age?" He tries to look stern, but glances down, chuckling. "Because if you are, I'm afraid I must agree."

Yet he disappointed Mary with little difficulty, he reflects as his gaze moves over the looming headline once again. Well, she wouldn't be the only one. He scuffs his hand over his chin, the day's growth of stubble prickling the calluses on his palm as he ponders that getting this scoop hasn't given him the same rush he felt earlier, when Mary bit down on his shoulder as she cried out his name and shuddered beneath him. As he no doubt would have experienced again tonight, if he stayed for their planned tryst.

But he had no choice but to leave, had he? In any case, if he _did _err, Mary was punishing him for it. His brows knit as he puffs on his cigar, the butt glowing red as the colour he saw as he remembers how deliberately she pretended to comfort Mr Napier.

"If there's nothing else, Sir Richard, I'll just go home for a few more hours' sleep before work?"

"I'll give you a ride." The chair groans, and so does Richard, as he stands and stumps out his cigar in the cut glass ashtray. Over Miss Fields' protest, he says, "You shouldn't be walking alone at this hour, and it's on my way."

As he flicks out the wall switch on their way out, plunging the office into darkness, he pauses in the doorway, thinking of the cocooning dark of Mary's bedroom, where he dozed with her after they made love. He could be there with her now, instead of leaving the office with his secretary to drop her off at her flat while he fell into the empty bed in the empty Knightsbridge townhouse he did not even especially care for. He would be rising there, early-as he would here-but for the purpose of sneaking out before the chambermaid caught him in her ladyship's bedroom-again-kissing a drowsy Mary and telling her to go back to sleep for a while.

Really, Mary has no need to punish him at all; he's doing that quite adequately himself.

Though...how angry _is _she?

"Actually, Miss Fields, there is one more thing," he says as they take their coats from the tree in Miss Field's reception room.

If the prospect of more work perturbs the secretary, her face does not belie it with so much as a flicker.

"Yes, Sir Richard?" she says, going to her desk.

"I'd like to dictate a telegram."

M STOP DIDN'T WANT TO GO STOP LIKE YOUR GRANDMOTHER THE NEWS DOES NOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE WORK WEEK AND THE WEEKEND STOP R

"Oh, Sir Richard," says Miss Fields when she has taken it down. "You _have _gone soft."


End file.
